MTA responds to Boston Globe editorial on Mass Insight AP program

MTA President Anne Wass' letter to the editor appeared in the August 29, 2009, Boston Globe.

The Globe editorial on a controversial Advanced Placement grant program sponsored principally by ExxonMobil gives short shrift to teachers’ legitimate concerns. We fully support new resources to increase the number of AP classes and professional development for AP teachers. We oppose the sponsors’ insistence that AP teachers be paid a $100 bonus for every student who passes the exam.

AP teachers themselves understand that their students’ success rests in part on the efforts of teachers who came before them and on collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines. They realize that bonus pay for a few can have a corrosive effect on teamwork and morale.When approached about the program, teachers in many schools asked that the bonus money be used instead to fund college scholarships for students. The sponsors rejected that principled idea. The Globe insists that the union dislikes pay for test scores while teachers do not. But a scientific poll of Massachusetts teachers this year found that 92 percent opposed "paying higher salaries and bonuses to teachers based on student test scores.’’Could it be they know something about quality education that ExxonMobil and The Boston Globe do not?